


He Heard Her

by viajera_pensativa



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 23:47:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19778980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viajera_pensativa/pseuds/viajera_pensativa
Summary: What if Angel hadn't disappeared before Buffy said "I missed you too" in S2E1?





	He Heard Her

"I missed you too," she admitted, a sudden crack forming in the wall she'd had around her all summer. 

Angel, about to leap out the window, paused and turned around. "You did?" 

"Yeah." She felt more vulnerable than she had in months, lying in her bed with this 200-something-year-old man--vampire--standing over her, looking like something off the cover of a teen magazine. She wanted him to come to her, touch her, hold her hand, keep her warm (except he couldn't do that, his body temperature was always inhumanly cool).

Angel sat back down on the window ledge. He wanted to go to her, sit in her bed, hold her even. He had to hold himself back from rushing to her side. "It's good to hear you missed me. I could have come down to LA, you know." 

"I'm sure my dad would have liked that." She smiled. "Not that your schedules are exactly compatible. Anyway, I was busy with shopping trips and pretending to be a normal teenage girl." Her eyes rolled and her mouth puckered a bit like she was tasting something sour. "Not that I didn't make a bit of time for slaying."

Angel raised an eyebrow. "You did? What did you see down there?"

"Just a few mall vamps. Turns out that centers of commercial enterprise are good places to find prey of the human variety. They dusted quick." She paused, remembering some of the darker energies she'd felt and ignored. "I feel like I barely scratched the surface though. I had to tune out a lot of slayer-tingles in order to focus on spending time with my dad." This was the most she had talked with someone openly in weeks, including said dad.

"Evil thrives in large cities almost as much as it does on hellmouths. Too many places to hide," Angel confirmed.

Buffy scoffed. "Unlike good ol' SunnyD, where the demons don't even bother hiding--they become teachers instead!"

Angel stared at her for a long moment. "You sure changed the subject of us missing each other quickly."

"I--what else is there to say about it?" She fidgeted with the covers, but unconsciously moved over as well, as if making room for him on the bed. He noticed. 

"Do you want me to come over there?"

"Yes," she half-whispered, half-squeaked, and he was vampire fast, on top of the covers, not touching her, but all it would take is the reach of an arm. She was looking down at the blankets, pulling at a loose seam on her comforter. 

"What's wrong, Buffy?" 

"What do you think is wrong?" she shot back. "I died. And it wasn't even random chance. It was prophesied. Everything about my life is determined by being a slayer, even my death! The only reason I came back was because you and Xander found me."

"You seemed alright that night. You said you felt strong." 

"I did, at the time. But it was like an adrenaline high. It only lasted for a few hours. I started coming down as soon as the Master was dead--as soon as I killed him." She looked up at Angel. "I don't want to talk about this. It feels terrible. I don't even want to think about it. But also I do want to talk about it, and I have no one to talk to. Neither of my parents know that I died. If I bring it up, they might put me in a mental hospital again."

"They did that?" he asked, both eyebrows shooting up now. 

"Yes, after what happened at my old high school. I told them all about the Slayer gig, and that that was why I'd burned down the school gym. Stupid. Of course they didn't believe me." She realized that she was telling Angel a lot about her life that she usually kept very private, but it was like once she'd opened up, she couldn't stop. And then she said what was really bothering her, what had weighed on her all summer, heavy as a loaded coffin. "I'm going to die, Angel. I got so lucky this time, but next time, or the time after that, I won't." She began to cry, and leaned toward him. "I knew Slayers die young. Of course they--I mean, of course _we_ do. How could we not? But it didn't use to feel real." She sniffled into Angel's jacket, getting snot on it. "I thought I'd somehow be the exception, that those rules didn't apply to me. Now I know they do."

Angel held her, though his face, if she could see it, was grim. He had nothing with which to refute what she was saying. He knew Slayers died young--a vampire of his own line had killed two. There was only one thing he could offer. "I'm going to do everything I can to stop that, Buffy." Unfortunately, this only seemed to make her cry harder. (He didn't know that this was a good thing for her, that she needed this release and could only do that with someone strong enough there to make sure she didn't fall into a million pieces and never come back together again.) 

Maybe there was one more thing he could offer, after all. He waited for her cries to subside a bit. When she sat up, wiping at her eyes (he helped by pulling her hair of of her wet cheeks), he dove in. "I want to tell you something."

"What?" Her voice almost gurgled with tears. She reached into her nightstand drawer for a tissue to wipe up with. 

"I wasn't supposed to tell you this, but I have reason to believe that normal Slayer rules don't necessarily apply to you after all." His voice was level, though if he had a heart, it would be beating fast.

"What do you mean?" she asked, continuing to wipe at her eyes and nose, still sniffling a bit. 

"Before I met you, I was approached by a demon sent by the Powers That Be..."

**Author's Note:**

> This turned out longer than I expected. This could turn into a whole AU/Alternate Timeline. I got the idea while rewatching some episodes for research on another fic idea. I might add more chapters later, but for now I guess I'll leave it as a One Shot. 
> 
> If you feel like leaving feedback, one format I appreciate is "Rose, Bud, Thorn":  
> Rose: Something that you thought worked well  
> Bud: Something that you think could be developed further  
> Thorn: Something that you didn't think worked so well  
> Stream of consciousness is OK too though.


End file.
